Poem: Organic Lightness

A bastard is waiting for the morning sun.
It means nothing to you

Maybe it takes a second to know
What spirals under gutless blue.

I’ve seen better days
I’ve seen them all.

What burned flesh
is not concerned with the new?

Unless you tell me
The fist was you
If you stop trying
I will think this through

The world is asleep
What more is true
I’ve seen better days
I still dream of you

I still do.

Still here

I’ve been busy since I got back, looking for work. Quitting nicotine is still surprisingly easy,  I now got more energy and I’m working out a lot. There might be drinks with friends tonight.. Good to be back!

Yo Yo Bye Bye

I’m going home tonight, I can’t believe it.  After 96 hours the nicotine cravings are almost gone. The trick is not to fall into old habits or vice versa. I’m gonna see if I can buy an Australian hat, something that is cool to wear anywhere else than here. And gifts for the family. I think I’ve lost a few punds, and I intend to lose more. Hopefully I’ll get some sleep on the plane. 40 hours of traveling to look forward to! Do it like a robot to headspin to boogaloo. The fun part is that I broke my ipod.. but I haven’t finished all the books. It was too easy to get drunk last night. On Beer. Not yet sober, ding-di-di-ding-di-di-ding-ding-boom-boom-boulder.

Smile my brains out, I’ve waitet monts for this;

I’m going home, Mate.

Hiiighly Distinctive Of You! Bam! Barem!

YESSS!! Fuckin-A!!!!

All that hard work payed off and I got an A or a ‘highly distinctive’ grade in Creative Writing. I wanted to brag a little.. cause I fuckin’ rule!!!

Just kidding, I’m pathetic.. It sure feels good though. Surprised the short fiction I wrote for the folio got the highest score. But I guess I don’t want to share it on the blog,  looking back on it, it is quite sadisic. Just a bit too much. Must be someting wrong with me.. But fuckin-A!! I heard creative writing is very usefull if you want to be a screenwriter, so I’m very happy.

I can share the sonnet I wrote. This is counted syllables, rhyming and shit. And it’s about death.. and writing maybe.

Sonnet to a poet

Poet, I went to see your grave today;
To lay my hands in soil and feel defeat,
To find your life defined in words complete.
In conclusion of death, life will display!

Alive at sea this sonnet twist and turn;
Words come they stream they laugh they dream they bleed,
They drop me off in vast thickets of reeds.
To live and breathe as rivers turn; to burn!

In dreamless sleep they suppose that you rest
To breathe your breaths and swallow the unknown
And not to feel pain inside of your chest

Vow still to disregard caution alone
To see dark skies makes horizons possessed
Poet, words will know to where you have flown

Run To Your Grave

I’m quitting nicotine. Yes, I have about five days of hell to look forward to. No problems yet, I’m strangely committed. Yesterday I bought some gum, but I figured what’s the point!? I still be addicted to nicotine. Fuck it. We’ll just see how it goes this time.. without anything.

Must say the new Mae Shi album rocks! It’s called ‘HLLLYH’ and I’ve been listening to it all week.. video-game synths and joyfulness.

Going out, gonna sit in the sun and read.

Peace

The Dick Cavett Show - Cassavetes, Falk, and Gazzara

I must admit to becoming a youtube junkie, and it’s hard to write a blog without sharing any of these videos. There is plenty treasures, interviews and rarities to discover..

Now I would like to share with you the greatest thing I’ve found on Youtube ever!

John Cassavetes, I don’t really know where to start.. Remembering last summer, I worked at a dreadful pizza restaurant. Some days were quiet, and I could read ‘Cassavetes on Cassavetes’ in between costumers. This fine book actually mentions this television appearance on ‘The Dick Cavett Show’. Cassavetes, Falk, and Gazzara were promoting the film ‘Husbands’, and of course being up to no good. They were just clowning around, rolling on the floor, ignoring the host, and making irrelevant remarks. People say this here is proof of John’s immaturity and strange behaviour.. It’s clear to me he’s just having fun, mocking the talk-show conventions.

The man was a true genious! The greatest filmmaker that ever lived! No Doubt. Ben is my favorite actor of all time, and Falk is just fine too. Well, in Cassavetes films that is.

So, I’m very glad I found this.. So funny!

After seeing Entourage again, it really occured to me that the writers is pretty inspired by the life of Cassavetes. The whole Billy Walsh character is reincarnation of Cassavetes (screaming at the audience in Cannes and so on). And things like the guys putting up their house to make the films they want.. Many similarities there.. Can’t wait for season 5 in September!

On John Waters

I recently watched all the classic John Waters films, having only watched Pink Flamingoes previously. Even if ‘Pink Flamingos’ is the most famous, filthiest and notorious film by cinemas “filth elder”, it’s definitely not the funniest!

I was pleasantly surprised to discover the rest of his work. The one I peronally liked best was actually ‘Polyester’. There is no scenes here that is as shocking as when Divine eats real dog shit in ‘PF’ or gets raped by a giant lobster in ‘Mondo Trasho’.. (Divine is of course the drag queen, starring in many of Water’s films). I guess only hearing about such scenes might be enough for people to want to check out the films. Waters used another gimmick to create buzz and renew the viewing experience with ‘Polyester’. It was filmed in what Waters called odorama; the people that attended ‘Polyester’ in the cinema were given a card that you could scratch and sniff during the film. Numbers flashes onscreen indicating when to scratch n’ sniff. Basically, you could sit there and smell the atrocities that was going on onscreen. Fun, huh?

Not really, but the funniest scenes in the film are these moments were Divine starts sniffing around like a dog, trying to locate these odors. I don’t think I’ve seen a film as funny this in ages. Divine plays Francine Fishpaw, a tortured and alcoholic mother. Everything just goes wrong in her life; devastating things happen to her in each and every scene of the film. It’s just great humour watching this hysterical, obese mother (which really is a drag queen) running around trying to keep her life together.. It might not be for everyone, but I constantly laughed with tears in my eyes during this great, GREAT little trash flick.

Jeff Garlin produced the documentary ‘This Filthy World’, which is a nice introduction. Although, I’m not sure if I would like to call it a documentary, it’s just Waters talking about his films onstage. Like stand-up maybe.. It’s quite entertaining, seeing that Waters is a very amusing old man. I would like to recommend it to anyone who dares to discover the work of cinemas beloved “filth elder”, the true master of bad taste.

I’m never bored

I had a nice weekend of silly drunkeness. Saturday was the last party with some of my friends here, before they go off to Europe. I’m leaving in a week myself, and thats a very strange feeling. I’ve had much fun here, and I will sure miss these Aussies..

I haven’t started on the script I’m supposed to write yet. I’ve tried, but the first set of ideas had too little potential to take me somewhere. The good thing is that I had a breakthrough in the main characters inner conflicts, witch gives me a stronger sense of a ‘controlling idea’, and it certainly makes it easier to write. Now, when I ask myself ‘what happens if the character was in this situation, what would he do?’ I have a better idea, because I know his innermost fears and thoughts.

I hope the structure of the story will be defined out from the character and the ‘controlling idea’. I love characters, and I think it’s the only way I can come up with a full concept. My ideas always starts with characters. Usually, writers do it the other way, they get their story structure first and finds fitting character types to act in their story. I don’t think it is the right way to go about it for me, because I think it can invite to creating flat characters that acts like puppets to express the story. My focus is different, but does that leave me to write a ‘flat’ story?  Not necessarily.. I just think one can find more depth in a character than in the story itself.. Maybe story and character it’s the same thing.. I just felt that my last screenplay was pretty much character-driven, but burdened with a cheap story structure. I want it to come to me more naturally this time, and not so forced. I do want to have a interesting story to tell, but I guess it will have a more modernistic feel to it..

I’m sure that I will not write anything before I have it all sorted out. When I know the story structure, with the controlling idea and characters fully defined, I can start the writing of the synopsis and the outline.. And when I get to this point, the script will pretty much write itself. I can’t just write any scene without knowing what is gonna happen in all the other scenes. Those days are over.

My philosophy used to be similar to the ones of Sherlock Holmes. When Watson was lecturing Holmes about cosmology, he told him that he didn’t need to know about all that stuff to crack the case. When I was at the gymnasium, I just wanted to make films. We even applied for and created our own film course to make this happen. The only A’s I got back then was in these courses I had personal interest in. Now I see why this is wrong. I’ve found so many new interests, there is this big thirst for knowledge within, I want to learn about everything.. and I think this is what have changed me for the better, and it really helps with the writing, or ‘cracking the case’. I don’t get uninspired as long as I have a library card. One must constantly fill up the vacuum with new ideas to keep it going.

Here’s a quote that I love from Naked, my favorite Mike Leigh film, that underlines what I’m getting at..

Louise:

So what happened, were you bored in Manchester?

Johnny:

Was I bored? No, I wasn’t fuckin’ bored. I’m never bored. That’s the trouble with everybody - you’re all so bored. You’ve had nature explained to you and you’re bored with it, you’ve had the living body explained to you and you’re bored with it, you’ve had the universe explained to you and you’re bored with it, so now you want cheap thrills and, like, plenty of them, and it doesn’t matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it’s new as long as it’s new as long as it flashes and fuckin’ bleeps in forty fuckin’ different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I’m not fuckin’ bored.

The God Delusion

Finally, I found a copy of ‘The God Delusion’. I really enjoy reading it, it’s very well written and argued, informative and quite entertaining. Richard Dawkins has the right additude towards religion - enough with the politeness and respect already!  He does it without being tasteless or inappropriate in any sense, he just speaks clearity and truth and does a very important job, I think.

There are plenty youtube videos of Dawkins of television appearances and such, which is highly amusing. To see him on Bill O’Reilly (perhaps Americas most disgusting, deluded and tragic figure) is a treat. But if you want to find out what the man is about, see some clips of shows where they at least let him talk..  then it should be enough to want to read his book.. and I think everyone should read it.

While You Wait For The Others

I have a suspicion that the next Grizzly Bear record is gonna be amazing. Can’t stop listening to a new song that they played on ‘Morning Becomes Eclectic’. It’s called ‘While you wait for the others’ and it’s just incredible!

You can check out the whole session on

http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/mb/mb080227grizzly_bear

or

See them performing my new favorite song here